share-ation

When I hear, do or see something nice, or lovely, or beautiful, my immediate reaction is to want to share it. The difficulty is how exactly to get the person who I'm sharing my excitement with to acutally share the excitement. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that I often get very excited (to the point of chills) about things I can't quite put my finger on. Last night I got excited about an inpromptu private art show in my room when the combination of the tree outside my window and the fire truck with its lights flashing across the road projected a perfect, if decidedly abstract, video instilation on my wall. In my mind the "artist" was attempting to illustrate the seemingly seamless co-existance of man-made and natural objects that combine to make a city larger than the sum of its parts. Or today, when reading Focus in the Saturday Globe, I got all tingly about members of the Chinese diaspora in Canada returning to China to pursue a new/old life. How do I try to get you to feel those tingles if I have no idea what they were about? Yet, I desperatly want you to. I think that somewhere deep down, I want someone to be lucky enough to experience life as I do.

Development and the Media

I have just discovered podcasting. I listen to the BBC all the time at home, but now I can listen to their best of while in transit. None of this having to listen to music anymore! The podcasts that are currently eagerly awaiting transfer from iBook to iPod are the documentary "Return to Sarajevo" (looking back at the wartorn country years later, with a specific focus on a set of people that they interviewed soon after the conflict) and the personal journalistic reflection of the day.

Especially lately I've been taken by the development relevance of all current events. Even the newspaper articles or radio broadcasts that don't deal specifically with issues of basic needs, humanitarian disaster, poverty, or health and environmental crises. Even the articles that seem to have nothing to do with the third world. For some reason, everything that is going on in the world is all relevant to the distorted wealth and power gradient of the world which is the incentive for development. Is it just that the world is going through a development phase? In a positive light, one could think that the world has become so global that the issues of other countries and foreign individuals are finally becoming important to the average Canadian citizen in a way that they have not in the past. In a more pessamistic view, one could say that global issues, and more specifically Canada's involvement in engaging with and manipulating global issues, are currently trendy, and thus the media frames most stories in that light. Perhaps it is just my academically aquired development coloured glasses.

flesh and blood

I have the october blues. I am bored. I crave more adventure than continued placement seeking, waitressing and school have to offer. So, about a month ago I applied to release my adoption records from the BC government. It turns out that my name at birth was Alexandra Robertson. My mother was/is Kate Robertson. And now I'm Kate Alexandra. So, I know more about who I was for that 11 days before I belonged to my current family, the Jongbloed-Gait's. Moments before turning to my computer to post this blog, I was busy starting the next step: an active search for my birth mum. Hurrah! This is something I've waited for ever since I can remember. Perhaps I'll make posts as I go through the exciting and emotional ride of meeting, or not meeting, my own flesh and blood for the first, second, third...time. For now, I just wanted to address some FAQs:

When did you find out that you were adopted, what was that like?

My parents told me so early on that I can't remember not knowing that I was adopted. As such, it's always been part of my identity. However, at first I was a bit confused, thinking that we were all adopted. As I understood it, all babies were switched to different, more appropriate, parents at birth.

Do you like your adoptive parents?

Sometimes, upon finding out that I"m adopted, people's reaction is to say, "oh, I'm sorry". But, the truth is I've never felt a lack because of my adopted nature. I have lovely parents, that are completely and totally my parents. I don't feel like I was rejected by my birth parents, as my father didn't know of my existance, and my mother wrote me a letter at my birth to explain why she put me up for adoption. She felt that she couldn't offer me all that she wanted at such a young age, and felt there was another family who could better take care of me. A fairly legitimate reason, I think. So, I feel like I have two and a half sets of parents that love me!

How are you going to find your birth mom, and what about your dad?

The government of BC has an active registry program where I apply to find my birth mother. They contact her, and if she is interested in having contact with me, the intermediary puts us in touch. However, there is a chance that she will reject my application for contact, and I will not be allowed to contact her. As for my dad, I don't think he knows I exist. I've signed up for a passive registry of all the rest of my family: if they've applied to be put in contact with me, then they can further it themselves. Depending on the results with my birth mother, I may or may not decide to become more active in my pursuit of other family members.

How does it feel?

I am excited and nervous. I'm nervous that my mom, as noone knows about my birth (her parents, my father, potentially her new family), might deny me contact. This would be very difficult as I've intended to meet her my whole life. Also, in general I would, at least once in my life, like to know someone who shares the same genes as me (though I suppose that will happen if I ever have children on my own). I am excited about being face to face with her, about discovering the similarities between us. Essentially, studying what is nature about me and what is nurture.

Stay tuned.